Amazon India Lays Off 60 Employees, Many More May Follow

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Amazon India had started laying off a small portion of its workforce since last week, according to Economic Times report. This is the result of a global restructuring and many more employees might be asked to leave the company following the annual appraisals.


 


The company has put 25% more employees on so-called performance improvement plans (PIPs) in the December quarter as compared with a year earlier. This clearly means that many more are going to be fired.

A source close to the development commented that this is going to affect the teams that have over-hired.

Amazon confirmed the layoffs in India, claiming that it was a part of the company’s global process.

“As a global organisation, we have recognised the need to organise our teams to keep us agile and help us use our resources optimally. This has impacted a small number of roles within the company and we are providing complete support to the impacted employees, including the option of relevant internal postings and outplacement services,”

a company spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also added that Amazon continues to hire for multiple roles and currently has 4,000 job openings in the country, including several from previous years.


Background

Amazon is not known for layoffs. But the global e-commerce behemoth purportedly cut hundreds of jobs at its Seattle’s headquarter and in global operations.The layoffs were primarily focussed on Amazon’s consumer retail businesses.

Amazon India is aggressively pushing AWS powered by Alexa and other AI products in the country. Therefore, one might conclude that this move by Amazon would be affecting the Indian market as well.

These are the areas, where the e-commerce giant felt that there would no longer be any requirement for more staff as they have matured to yield more revenues.

“This is part of a global reorganisation as Amazon and (CEO Jeff) Bezos look to strategically deploy resources into high-growth and priority areas to further drive the consumer flywheel over the coming years,”

said Daniel Ives, chief strategy officer at New York-based market research firm GBH Insights.

A significant number of layoffs have also come from Amazon’s subsidiaries such as Twitch and WFM.


Layoffs in other e-commerce portals

Last month, e-tailer Shopclues had laid off around 52 employees across its marketing and operations verticals.

A company spokesperson had confirmed the development but has also mentioned that the firing of the employees was done considering their individual performances. He added that the laying off has impacted only 4% of the workforce.

The layoffs have taken place at a time when the company is facing a stiff competition from India’s two biggest e-commerce companies, Flipkart and Amazon. Along with this, Snapdeal is also steering towards a pure marketplace model with a focus on non-branded products. This has given rise to a competition with Snapdeal that caters mostly to customers outside the metro cities. Walmart might also be the newest contender in the e-commerce market in India if its ongoing deal with Flipkart materializes.


Also Read: Snap is laying off 100 employees mostly in advertising and sales